Lost and Found

[userj]

Well, I left my wallet and keys at the bus stop today.  It was different from other times I've lost things because I knew about 10 minutes afterwards what I had done.   Another difference was that although I knew exactly where they were, it was almost impossible at that point for me to go back and get them.   Thanks to nice people, they've been

Comments

[salieri]

I'm prepared to call bullshit here too. Even accepting as true the dubious claim that women are mostly married and won't go drink beer, I still seriously doubt there would be a negative impact on research. Social gatherings over beer might be a convenient way to talk to colleagues, but if that's no longer true then people will form those collaborations in other ways. It's not as though physics stopped when people didn't get together at Huygens' place. If people can't meet at night or in a bar, then they'll find other times and venues.

Also, along the lines of what Claire said, it's myopic to see the pool of people entering academia more than double and think the discipline will suffer because they aren't as singularly devoted to the work as the smaller group was. Unless he thinks women are just dumber than men then his field now can have 2 geniuses for every 1 they had in the past. That doesn't sound so negative to me.

[nightswatch]

And anyway, doesn't current social science tell us that none of us are spending time with real people anyway, we're all just on facebook? His argument is so 20th century.

[bramakote]

I'll drink to that.

[userj]

Sort of replying to everyone above...

OK so, I don't really think my boss would think that this would affect "the discipline" negatively, but more simply that these sorts of collaborations will occur less often (I said "...could (negatively?) affect these sorts of intellectual collaborations...").

It's a form of the more common "couple problem" where some people when they have a permanent partner tend to not feel as obligated to form strong social connections with others (like my personal example above).

Also that people who are married to other busy professionals tend to be very busy and have less time outside of work to do things like talk about science with their peers in a social setting.

And, if women are more likely to A) be in a couple and B) be in a couple with another busy professional...

Also wow, sheesh people you are definitely jumping to conclusions about by boss thinking women are stupid and/or doesn't want women in science?!

[salieri]

Well a lot of the problem here might be a lack of context. If all your boss was really saying was that he'll miss talking to colleagues over a beer on friday night, then I really don't have a problem with that. What I thought you were suggesting was that he thought it was a bad thing for the academic community that those collaborations are lost. That also isn't necessarily a terrible thing to say provided that he actually understands that the academic community stands to gain a great deal more than it's losing with more women entering the profession even if there are fewer of the collaborations your boss was talking about